1. Field
The present art relates to a technology for circuit design.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electronic circuit that controls an information processing apparatus, a communication device, or the like generally includes a plurality of printed circuit boards connected to each other via connectors. Design work of such an electronic circuit includes checking of whether signals are correctly assigned to pins of the connectors by comparing pieces of design information of the printed circuit boards.
To easily and reliably perform the checking operation, some conventional technologies have been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H8-69486 discloses a connector-information check apparatus. The connector-information check apparatus reads attribute information of a connector pin and a signal from a circuit diagram file of a printed circuit board and that from a circuit diagram file of another printed circuit board to be connected to the former one, and compares the pieces of the attribute information. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-325315 discloses a multi-PCB-connection design support apparatus. The multi-PCB-connection design support apparatus logically traces a signal line between printed circuit boards connected via a back wiring board to verify that a signal is correctly assigned to a connector pin.
The conventional technologies improve efficiency of the checking operation performed after design of printed circuit boards to be connected via connectors is once completed; however, these technologies do not improve efficiency of designing a printed circuit board itself. Recently, a product is developed in a shorter span, and thus, there is a need of a technology for improving efficiency of designing a printed circuit board.
Besides, conventional technologies require that the same name be assigned to corresponding pins of connectors to be connected to automatically recognize an association between the pins. Specifically, if a pin name A1 is assigned to a driver-side connector pin, the same pin name A1 needs to be assigned to a receiver-side connector pin corresponding to the driver-side connector pin.
However, it is often the case that actual design work is performed using connector information that have already been registered, and names of pins of connectors cannot be freely set. In this case, the conventional technologies are not applicable that require assignment of the same name to corresponding connector pins.